Well, Friday and Saturday were spent doing things for other folks and Sunday I barely got the fore top mast shaped before I got a visit from someone I haven't seen in decades. Maybe today I can make a little headway.

I made a false rudder head to hide the collar on the tiller. It's attached to the tiller with a hole to access the set-screw.

My soldering iron tips have a 1/4-20 thread, so I found a screw and ground it into a blade to cut the sails with. I tried it out on some scrap and made a pennant, but it doesn't cut smoothly. It's hot enough but snags. I saw a video about using a hot knife to cut cloth. It didn't describe the tool or show the tip, but it did mention cutting on glass - hmmm?

Moving on... I started making mast hoops. I used 1/16" bass cut into 1/8"ish strips.The ends are feathered with a couple of swipes of the plane. The strips are soaked in hot water then wrapped around a 1" dowel. You can see how feathering the ends works in the finished hoop.

A bit of sanding and maybe a little stain and a couple of dots with the Sharpie to look like rivets and they'll be done; but then I still have about 15 more to make.

I silver soldered a brass blade to the brass screw I used to make a hot knife tip for my soldering iron. My iron is a small wattage, "pencil" type. I found that I had to experiment with the speed of the cut to find the best speed - too slow, and the knife makes a thick bead of melted plastic, too fast, and the blade leaves long strings of melted poly, or does not cut at all. It helps to keep out of drafts, too, as they cool the blade. I was cutting thin nylon(?) for jibs, not thick cloth like Supplex. If your iron is catching, perhaps you need to move slower?

Hope this helps. btw, your top&caps, along with your hoops, look very nice

A friend came over last year to replace the AC core and left behind a soldering rod. The hot iron didn't scratch it a bit and it even takes a second or two before direct torch got it to melt. Cleaned, fluxed, heated red hot - and still the solder wouldn't stick to anything; blade or screw .

So I drilled it through and stuck a bit of brass rod through it and peened it over on each side. Fastening wise, that was great, but while it would cut nicely, it didn't seem to wanna melt, even held in place for a bit.

So I shortened the screw so the blade would be right against the body of the iron. That seemed to help a lot. It cuts nice and clean and if I go slow it melts nicely. It doesn't melt out of control or singe when you pause, and it works about as well as the one in the video.

Made a pennant from some scrap Supplex.

I'm gonna find a copper screw and some copper nails and make another one. Soldering tips are usually copper which conducts heat better, so I think I get better performance that way.

had the same problems....i put a screw in also.....but i think that oxidation builds up between the screw assembly and knife and reduces conductivity.....best to weld it, but it seems to be working for you ..good show.....you didn't use a glass table did you?

Cut the first sail for the model. My lady bought an ugly painting for the frame at some thrift store a while back. I didn't have anything to fit the frame, so it's been behind the TV for a couple of years. It's about a 27" x 20" piece of glass, so it became a cutting board.

I don't see that this works better on glass, in fact, I think it worked better on wood. I think a piece of particle-board, hard and with no grain to grab the blade, or hardboard (Masonite) would work better.

As it is, I've cut out the fores'l and it was a lot easier than cutting with the rotary cutter and then trying to seal the edges afterward like I did with Constellation's sails.

I agree with Yancov...oxidation kills the heat transfer. We used to have to sand the regular, solid copper, soldering tip's connection with the Weber iron before every use. The black oxidation crust on the copper (at the electric end, not the actual solder end) must insulate the copper somehow.

The knife is working very well. Using the 24" steel rule doesn't help, a Dan's pointed out in other threads, it cuts better free-hand.

I cut out all 8 sails and things went very smoothly. I did them all on glass. I used a little more pressure to let the blade actually cut rather than try a melt my way through, and I changed the angle I held the blade relative to the surface - something I'll keep in mind when I make another blade. It actually went smoother for me pushing the blade on it's heel rather than pulling it on it's point.

I ruled in the panel seams on both sides with a .01 permanent marker and made a new cyclops eye (Baltimore seal) for the t'gallant. On the first one I did the black first and the yellow marker picked it up - this time I did the yellow marker first and it came out much cleaner (the original didn't look so hot either).

I have to cut out some sail parts yet; reef bands, corner patches, tabling, bunt cloths, that sort of thing - which will all be much easier to deal with using the hot-knife.

The real fore-stays'l had a bonnet and I've been wondering how to deal with that. I really considered making a working bonnet, but I don't want to. I'm thinking I'll glue on a reefband sort of strip, punch sets of holes along it, and lace a line through it. That should look good enough.

Before I cut them from the cloth, I made new patterns for the heads'ls and main tops'l. Looking at photos of the boat compared to the sail plan, these sails were different. The tops'l wasn't as deep, with a higher clew.

I miss-measured something on my fore-stays'l pattern and redrew it correctly. I had made the leech too long so the foot hung too low.

I remarked the jib on the sail plan back in 82 to show it's higher clew. Originally a couple of crew had to go out and walk the thing around the stay when the boat came about, I guess that got old quick, so they recut the sail in '78. I was going to reduce the overlap even more, but it just looked too skinny to me, so now it's correct for what was on the boat in 81. The fores'l originally had a bonnet also, but they either sewed it on under a reef band, or replaced the fores'l outright in 78 or 79 - probably the same time they did the fore-stays'l. So if you see a picture of the boat with a bonnet on the fores'l, and note mine doesn't have one, it's cause the real boat didn't have one by the time I was on her.

Besides being shaped a little differently from the drawn plans, the flying jib was set much higher in practice than shown in the plans. I wasn't sure if I'd be using this sail on the model, but the real boat seemed to sail with the flying jib and without the main tops'l more often than not. I think the jack-yard tops'l was just a pain in the ass and the jib was nothing to to deal with.

The jib and the flying-jib are marked with miter-cut cloth panels, because that's what the boat had. It's not authentic for an 1812ish Baltimore Clipper since that style of sail didn't start appearing until the 1860's - but I'm not building a model of an 1812 schooner, I'm building a 1981 schooner.

Hi Jerry, your on the right track looking at heat transfer, of the 3 metals that you can use for cutting tips, brass is the worst that you can use.
heat transfer of metal
brass = 110
aluminum = 250
copper = 400
as you can see aluminum is 2 times better then brass
and that copper is 4 times better then brass
John R.